Some years back, the news media latched onto the topic of silly, wacky, or outdated laws'absurd laws that found their way onto the books of various state and municipal governments and never were eliminated. One such law was that in one jurisdiction?I think it was New Jersey'it was illegal to send a cow up in a hot air balloon.

People laughed, and it does seem on the surface that it's a silly law; but I would bet that the law exists because at some point some idiot sent a cow up in a balloon with unfortunate results.

The point is that most laws and regulations exist because of some carelessness, incompetence, or abuse that resulted in serious harm to someone, or to a group of someones. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan deregulated the banking industry, and then the Savings & Loan crisis occurred; greedy bankers put much of their S&Ls' capital into bad loans that went belly-up, resulting in the banks' closings and the loss to depositors of billions of dollars'in many instances, in people's life savings. Today we're faced with a similar crisis because of the proliferation of complex, fiscally unsound mortgage instruments that have trapped consumers into financial obligations they can't meet. Millions of consumers are facing foreclosure, and the mortgage lenders are faced with billions of dollars of lost revenue'and you can bet they'll land on the steps of the Capitol with their hands out, asking to be bailed out of their predicament.

If the Democratic majority holds in the House and Senate, it's likely that we will be looking at some form of new regulations for the home mortgage industry; and, rather than mortgage lenders trying to lobby against it, perhaps they should smarten up, take their medicine, and participate in drafting fair, ethical regulations that will protect consumers, the national economy, and, ultimately, themselves.

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